Brookings Oregon hits record high of 108, but official USHCN climate station says otherwise.

The Oregonian posted this news story below of a new high temperature of 108 being set in Brookings, OR under “breaking news”. The town newspaper, the Curry Coastal Pilot, had this breathless front page story along with a picture of the bank thermometer, even though they have their own weather station downtown.

Only one problem; the temperature is measured at the airport. The official USHCN station closer to the coast read differently. I called the Medford NWS Forecast Office and inquired. These are the numbers for high temperatures on July 8th, 2008:

Brookings Airport ASOS 108°F

Brookings USHCN COOP station 90°F

Curry Coastal Newspaper Office 108°F

Agrimet station 107°F

Crescent City, CA 68°F (28 miles south)

Now compare the location of the USHCN station with that of the airport ASOS station, the newspaper office, and with the wind direction that day:

Click for a larger image

As they say in real estate, “location is everything”. In this case the USHCN station appeared to be away from the “Brookings Effect” that is often seen when a north wind blows from the mountains through town.

UPDATE: Here is the data from the Brookings ASOS at the airport:

Click for full sized image

I wonder which temperature will be used for the new “official” high for the town in the NCDC records? The USHCN station, or the airport?

Brookings hits 108 record high Tuesday, hits 102 today

by Stuart Tomlinson and Helen Jung, The Oregonian July 09, 2008 18:15PM

With temperatures in the southern coastal town of Brookings breaking 100 degrees for the second day in a row, the calls were coming into the Portside Suites hotel with the same desperate inquiry.

Do you have air conditioning?

The 3-year-old hotel is one of the few lodgings in the area that could say the magic word: yes.

Brookings, just north of the California border and along the Oregon coast, is known for its sometimes very un-coastal weather that has come to be called the “Brookings effect.”

But the same forces that normally send balmy breezes downslope into the area have gone into overdrive this week, baking the town with an all-time record of 108 degrees on Tuesday, as measured at the airport, and turning the town and its homes into shelters of swelter.

Brookings hasn’t been the only hot spot in Oregon the last few days. The Portland area hit 89 on Tuesday and 89 again on Wednesday. That drove residents into pools and away from at least one area golf course.

But Brookings was in a class by itself. It’s record is five degrees hotter than the previous high of 103 degrees in 1973. And on Wednesday, the high had reached 102 by 5 p.m.

At least in the morning, the heat did not keep folks off the links.

At the Salmon Run public golf course, the pro shop was “packed” by 8 a.m, said Joel Vanwesterhuyzen.

Even at 8 a.m., Vanwesterhuyzen said the temperature at the golf course – which is east of town – was 76 degrees.

While some parts of town were reporting significantly cooler temperatures – even a mile can make a difference in Brookings – the heat, forecasters said, will keep on coming, lasting well into the weekend.

“A lot of people say they want to sleep here and hang out,” said Justin Crocker, manager of Ray’s Food Store, which has air conditioning. “They’re going up to the river and down to the beach after work … doing anything they can do to beat the heat.”

The air conditioning at Beachfront Gifts was also drawing people into the store, said clerk Krissi Hunter.

“Every time (customers) come in, they take a deep breath and say ‘it’s hot out there,'” she said.

Meanwhile, people in the Portland suburbs were reacting similarly.

The fountain behind Lakeview Village in downtown Lake Oswego teemed with little ones screeching with delight. Lisa McKinney takes her two daughters to fountains around the metro area on hot days. She chose this spot, hoping it would be less crowded.

“We headed down here when we heard it was going to be a really hot day,” she said. “It keeps them happy and cool.”

Were her daughters happy and cool? “Yeah, because I’m running through the fountain,” trumpeted little Cameron, blonde wet streaks plastered to her forehead.

Farther west, kids took to the pool in Somerset West Park. A lot of kids.

“We hit capacity today for the first time this summer,” laughed Carter Haag, who staffed the front desk at the pool. “It’s crazy.”

Suzy Valentine took her son and daughter here this morning for swimming lessons. Feeling the rising temperatures, she decided to come back for an afternoon session with her neighbor.

Their kids, who are good friends, frolicked in the water while their mothers sat on the edge of the pool, straw hats shading their faces, feet dipped into the wet.

At the Lake Oswego Municipal golf course, Suzi Beer stocked up on – well — beer. The 24-year-old college student drives a cart around the course, offering refreshments for sale. Wednesday, she picked the super-sized beer cooler and filled it to the brim.

But she needn’t have bothered.

The course was virtually empty. She didn’t make a single sale. Most of the golfers scattered about were well below drinking age.

“The course is just empty,” she said incredulously. “This is the first time I haven’t sold anything.”

The reason for the meager attendance? “Definitely the heat,” she said.

Not everyone thought it was too hot to swing a club, though.

Pat Webb was having lunch in the clubhouse with his father, Ed. The elder Webb is about to tee off at 2:10 p.m. with his buddies. Just like every Wednesday.

He and his friends only let cold, wet conditions keep them off the course. “We haven’t been heated out yet. The warmer the weather, the better the golf.”

Back in Brookings, as some guests checked out of the Portside Suites Wednesday morning, others were calling to reserve a room, said Stacie Lee, the manager. The hotel, which had had four openings Tuesday night at 6:30 p.m., was booked solid just an hour and a half later, as some locals finished up work and decided to pay the $130-$160 average room rate instead of stay home.

“When we were putting (air conditioning) in, people thought I was nuts,” said Virginia Byrtus, who owns the hotel with her husband Ken. “Boy, it’s paid off.”

You got 2 readings at separate locations at 108°F. What more do you want?
A Brookings East and Brookings West? Maybe these 108°F readings have to be adjusted accordingly to take nearby concrete, asphalt etc. into account, but clearly a new record has been established.
So hooray to the AGW folks…They have found an anecdote that proves nothing.
I’d advise them to look at GISS June temps, and compare them to GISS June temps 20 years ago.

“The analysis method was documented in Hansen and Lebedeff (1987), showing that the correlation of temperature change was reasonably strong for stations separated by up to 1200 km…”http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
What I want to know is, is Brookings teleconnected to Crescent City, or is Crescent City teleconnected to Brookings?

I wonder which temperature will be used for the new “official” high for the town in the NCDC records? The USHCN station, or the airport?
Oh those turf matters can drive an outsider in circles. I guess it would depend on which organization you asked. The National Weather Service (NWS) or the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), both of NOAA. Assuming the NCDC also stores the data for the NWS, in five years time, if you ask the NWS what the high temp was back in 8 July, I bet they’ll answer 108, but if you ask the NCDC the answer will be more equivocal, especially if the data from either station has been adjusted.

*covers eyes*. I see no UHI, UHI does not exist.
If you believe in UHI, you must also believe in a flat earth, the second gunman, and that the Trilateral Commission controls the planet. Or at least thus sayeth Hansen and Gore, twin prophets of AGW.

I checked further on the NCDC site and for Brookings, OR (Zip 97415), they list three stations — COOP ID’s 351058, 351055, and the Brookings Arpt. There is no data available online for the airport location. From such efficiencies are climate models built(?).

Anthony – How do you maintain your sanity when doing this work? I checked further on Brookings and it appears Brookings hasn’t yet been checked for Surfacestations. Upon yet further checking at the NCDC site I found that COOP 351005 operated from Oct ’36 to Apr ’02 and shared WBAN 24267 with the Brookings Arpt location. Discontinuity alert COOP 351058 began operations May ’02. I suppose that operation moved from the airport to its present location. Bet the adjustments to the historical record for this site are a gem.

Pierre, Bill
On AGW/UHI…UHI is AGW. Or, at least local and regional warming, with enough of it going on that it probably affects global averages. Of course, we know that.
Dodgy
While I’m skeptical of the 1200 km radius smoothing, it is said to correlate with temperature changes not absolute temperatures. So you can have differences in absolute temperatures within the radius, and it would still be valid, if temperature is changing by the same amount for all of them. Which isn’t likely.

Bill, UHI is a most basic concept in meteorology. No one denies it. Does it have a major impact on the temperature record? No, because we adjust for it, and while those adjustments might not be perfect (i’m aware of the issues in determining “rural” and whatnot), its well known and introduced into the uncertainity of the record.
I don’t see what the fuss is. The ASOS, for those of you who don’t know, is an automated observer station which is used in feeding real time informaiton back to the NWS and to help communicate weather condition with pilots. You can download the METAR generated by hte station directly from the NWS, and it is used by a number of services to generate current-weather web pages.
This is not clear cut as a skeptic would think on first site. Immediately, one should ask what the regional weather pattern was yesterday. Were conditions such that local breezes, particularly a sea breeze could dominate? The ASOS takes continuous readings while the COOP has one reading for the day – when was the thermometer reset and the reading taken? These two simple things could very easily account for the discrepancy between the two recorded highs.
But geeze, I thought that damned Hansen ordered all the stations re-sited to introduce a +20 degree warm bias in recent years!

Still cooler here in Enterprise, Oregon compared to last year. Just checked. I also was in Lewiston, Idaho yesterday, a notorious hot spot on the map. Cool there too (for Lewiston). Brookings may be hell on Earth but Wallowa County is like the Swiss Alps. We still have snow on the mountains.

“..While I’m skeptical of the 1200 km radius smoothing, it is said to correlate with temperature changes not absolute temperatures. So you can have differences in absolute temperatures within the radius, and it would still be valid..”
I understand the assertion, but wonder if one-off events in the system (either hot or cold) would feed though into the averages and distort them. I am a tyro in this business, and some of the assertions in climate stats are quite hard to follow – is there a simple description somewhere of how point temperatures taken randomly around a system which is not in thermal equilibrium can be reliably converted into a mean temperature for the whole?

Dodgy Geezer (02:30:57) :
“The analysis method was documented in Hansen and Lebedeff (1987), showing that the correlation of temperature change was reasonably strong for stations separated by up to 1200 km…”http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
I was going to squawk that only applied to the Arctic latitudes within the [I forget the name] circulation. However, your references states “The temperature changes at mid- and high latitude stations separated by less than 1000 km are shown to be highly correlated; at low latitudes the correlation falls off more rapidly with distance for nearby stations.”
It would be nice to associate numbers with the low/middle/high latitude, I thought that tropical temps didn’t vary much with distance.

I can set a record here in Ky. anytime you need one….do you want ice or heat? The media wants this GW so bad, it will do anything. Let’s see what the people think when gas is $7 a gallon and eveyone is losing their houses to forclosure.

This is a good example of an extreme UHI. Any large metropolitan centre will have UHI on a similar although probably lower level. Most (geniune) studies show an UHI of up to 3.5C for very large cities.
The question is, how much has this really impacted the global temperature trend? The average built into the stated temperature records of GISS, GHCN and Hadley is only an increase in the trend of 0.05C from 1900 to 2000.
Let’s check the math here and say the UHI is an average 2.0C for cities over 50,000. For the stated UHI temperature figure to be correct, only 2.5% of the stations in the record can have the normal 2.0C UHI. 97.5% of the stations have to be truly rural.
I’m sorry, the math does not add up. Way more than 2.5% of the stations are urban and the recorded temperature trend is much more contaminated by UHI than the stated 0.05CREPLY: Bill, this has little to do with UHI. It is a downslope wind effect. See Chinook Wind

So two different places in the same city differ by 18F, that’s 10C.
Kind of puts a temperature rise of 0.6C over a century into perspective, doesn’t it?
Also interesting that the newspaper reporters keep mentioning AC – do they not realize AC blasts out heat?

With all the devastation not only here in the United States, but around the w orld i wonder what it’s going to be like for all of our children, and grand children, we all have to do are part in stopping global warming. Classic46

For those of you who think NOAA just might have a problem dealing with numbers, read the following from their website found by googling’ NOAA Budget’:
In the Fiscal Year (FY) 2009 President’s Budget, the
Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration requests a total of
$4,109,847, an increase of $202,561,000 or 5.2% over
the FY 2008 enacted level, and $294,443,000 or 7.7%
above the FY 2008 President’s Budget.
(That’s a direct cut & paste.)
I really can’t get the answer that $4 million is an increase over $202 million. Maybe I forgot to carry somewhere in the dense calculations.
Or maybe we should confiscate their computers and issue slide rules.

I very much understand down slope winds. and the peak dosen’t have to be that high to cause the effect. Here in Alabama we often see differences of several degrees between the ridges and the valleys. Some times it is convection and sometimes down slope effects. That point is that it isn’t man made it is a natural weather event and is just part of the complexity of the earth weather system. There may be some UHI effect in Brookings but it isn’t this much.
Just my 2 cents.
Bill Derryberry

classic46: “With all the devastation not only here in the United States, but around the w orld i wonder what it’s going to be like for all of our children, and grand children, we all have to do are part in stopping global warming. ”
So you assign global warming as the reason for “all the devastation”? I am not even sure what you are calling devastation. In 2036 when the asteroid Apothos hits Earth, then you will see devastation, if you are one of the unlucky that survives.

Bill Marsh (03:45:55) :
“*covers eyes*. I see no UHI, UHI does not exist.”
Neither do I – Brookings is pretty small and the downslope winds get all the credit in this case.
One thing that non-US readers are probably not familiar with is the temperature gradient from the Pacific coast inland. When I was a kid growing up in Ohio (which is the US mid-west, even though it’s far closer to the east coast than the west coast), I was intrigued with the odd shapes Dave Garroway had to use on the US termperature board in the weather segment of the Today Show. (They had a base map and colored paperboard overlay that stuck to the base, artists cut out each band of 10 degree temps and California always had odd shapes.) I eventually got a chance to see west coast weather on a long bicycle tour in 1974.
The Pacific Coast gets wind off the cold Pacific, so is often chilly and foggy. Mark Twain once commented about the winter he spent in San Francisco one summer. The cool air generally doesn’t make it across the coastal range so inland things can be much hotter and much drier. Summer heat in the Sacremento area rises, sucking in more cool air and fog into San Francisco and environs. I’ve never lived there, I forget exactly when that happens, July or August, Anthony could tell you in an instant.
It looks like wind can come down a valley into Brookings and bring hot inland air, making it hotter as the elevation drops. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were 10-20 degree/mile gradients between the hot and cool.
Brookings’ low temp this morning was 58 – a 50 degree drop without a cold front. Impressive!

Who cares? If Brookings gets a Sundowner this is to be expected. While Sundowner type winds are rarer there than say Santa Barbara, with the strange south facing coast with highlands to the north, it is par for the course. I’d wager that Brookings has had past occurrences that, when UHI that has exploded over the past 20 years there, is taken into account, were just like this one was.

It was 45 degrees F last night down here in the valley. Today the temp stands at 75. July 2008 could be another record setting month for July lows. We have a small glacier in the Wallowas that I would bet has grown, not shrunk since 2007. With elevation in the 7000 to 9000 ft range, the temps up there have got to be still near the freezing range (yep, tonight the forecast is for 35 degrees above 8000). Backpackers that are coming into the valley to hike the mountains are being warned to prepare for near freezing nighttime temps. One of the downsides to global cooling in higher elevations is reduced milk production in both dairy and beef herds. That means calves will need expensive supplements. I think classic46 needs to look at what global cooling can do in terms of devastation before saying that global warming will kill us and our grandchildren.

With all the devastation not only here in the United States, but around the w orld i wonder what it’s going to be like for all of our children, and grand children, we all have to do are part in stopping global warming.
You are aware that there have been fewer and fewer deaths from “extreme climate” over the last century? (If not, be apprised.)

You are aware that there have been fewer and fewer deaths from “extreme climate” over the last century?
Thanks to advances in forecasting capabilities as well as technologies to help protect from the elements. When we can give 10-12 minute warnings on tornadoes, the death toll goes down. When we can give multi-day warnings on hurricanes, the death toll goes down. When people can heat themselves indoors during blizzards, the death toll goes down. When people can cool themselves during heat waves, the death toll goes down. When levies are built in floodprone areas, the death toll goes down.
The death toll trend is hardly a counterpoint to AGW.REPLY: And claims of death toll increases, and property damage increase due to AGW are flat wrong.

Pamela Gray, here on the west side of the Cascades in Gladstone, I can still see snow on mountains that should have been clear last month. We’re funny here about warm weather, though. 90 degrees F in Portland in July, and the media considers it breaking news, but not a word about the cold Spring we’ve had until bears started showing up at low elevations, looking for food to replace the berries and such that are running about three weeks late. It will be interesting to see what the glaciers on Mt. Hood do if we get another cold winter or two.

counters, studies have debunked rising extreme weather events. None of the events usually (and erroneously) connected with AGW show trends of any kind. They are not more frequent nor more severe. However, you are right that the death toll has gone down due to increased efforts to limit damage, decrease human suffering, and provide prompt rescue efforts. The costs have risen because our standard of living has risen. Guess what the reason would be for increased standard of living? When the Earth is warm, humans are more productive. So in the end, I hope you are right.

Hehe… and to what degree does Hansen and company honestly adjust for UHI? Hmmm… is “honestly” in their vocabulary?REPLY: Yes it is, their Lights= X adjustment procedure using night time satellite photos and counting streetlights around the station is an attempt to compensate for UHI.
Unfortunately it is flawed, and does not give a true picture for applying an adjustment. In some cases it fails outright causing a correction to be applied where none is needed. I don’t think they are trying to deliberately be dishonest with this, but they chose a method they thought would work, and it clearly doesn’t. The honesty test will come when we get the surfacestations survey completed and we can really see how lights=x stacks up against reality. – Anthony

Basil,
Yes, UHI is a AGW effect, but not a CO2 related AGW effect. My remark was sparked by the work of several pro-CO2 AGW scientists attempting to show that UHI is not a factor affecting temperatures that need adjusting (Peterson (2003), Parker (2004), Jones et al., 1990)). I believe Parker’s work (published in nature) suggested that UHI was in fact no more than .15C (might be wrong there, I don’t have his paper at hand) and Jones has been accused of being partially fraudulent (is that possible? like being partially pregnant?). Dr Pielke has some reservations about Parkers methodology and rejects his results.
Given this apparent difference in Oregon of over 10F, it seems to me that UHI is a bigger factor than the IPCC seems to think it is.

I’m just a layman and I have only recently started to delve into the detail of AGW when I suspected that the Global Warming/Climate Change issue as purported was perhaps not what it was said to be.
What I find difficult to grasp from all I have read on this blog (excellent though it is – Antony) is a coherent synopsis of all the findings. I am quite sure that all contributors (especially Antony and others) have spent many hours bringing to the wider community many great insights into the debate but where is it all pulled together? Where is the running executive summary?
My basic questions on ‘Climate change/Global Warming’ are:
1). Is the Earth warming?
2). If it is warming is it dangerous?
3). What are the causes?
4). What should we do about it?
To help with what I am saying – here is my very naive and simplistic assessment of the above, based on the limited assessments I have been able to make so far:
AGW proponents may say:
1). Yes – over the last 100 years there has been tremendous growth in the earth’s temperature
2). The warming is very dangerous and predicted to rise alarmingly
3). The cause is undisputedly mankind pushing vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere
4). We should cut carbon emissions at all costs
The ‘deniers’ (PC version) may say:
1). Yes over the last hundred years, but in context of the last 2000 years no – and btw we don’t know now (last 30 years) because the data used in the above argument is not available for peer review in a scientifically rigorous way
2). The warming is not dangerous and we have been here before
3). It’s the sun, and GHG driven by water vapour in the atmosphere -caused by irrigation, some CO2, particulates and dust
4). ? (though I strongly suspect there are many views on this point)
Look – all I am trying to do is bring the key elements of the debate together in my (layman) language.
Finally – I worry deeply about politicians making policy that will cost us all on the basis of less than rigorous science – the scale of the decisons being taken now is vast.
I appeal to all in the science community to bring rigour to this debate, to keep an open mind to both sides of the argument and ensure ultimately that in the very least we assess sensibly the problem and what we should do about it.

Measuring temperature accurately is more of a challenge that some are willing to acknowledge. Measuring temperature meaningfully is apparently an even greater challenge.
Maybe we should take up a collection to help everyone move out of Brookings, OR.

The death toll trend is hardly a counterpoint to AGW.
The death toll is a counterpoint to the costs of AGW.
The cooling of the atmosphere and oceans (at all depths) as recorded by the Argo buoys is a counterpoint to AGW.
As is the falsification of CO2 positive feedback loops, as indicated by NASA’s Aqua Satellite. (No feedback loops, virtually no CO2 warming. Period.)
Poor NASA is in quite a dither over it while the boys over at UAH are noting the decrease of heat-trapping vapor and the increse of heat-reflective low-level clods.
So are the ocean-atmospheric cycles, which have been in a warm phase, but are now beginning to revert to cool phase.
So is the surface station scandal on roller skates. (Both siting and adjustments.)
All of these developments came about AFTER CO2 AGW was a consensus. Now there is no longer a consensus.
(Not to mention that the GCMs have blown up on the pad.)

Besides, Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) both number and intensity of storms has been on a steady downward trend since the 1950s. (The Rev posted on this when it came out a while back. You can easily search the site for it.)

counters says,
“The death toll trend is hardly a counterpoint to AGW.”
What do you think will happen to the death toll trend if/when we implement the counter-AGW measures and the cost of cooling and heating rises considerably?

Dave,
If energy costs skyrocket people will stop aircinditioning and we’ll have the same response that the French had (French hospitals and Retirement homes are generally NOT air conditioned), i.e., heat related deaths will increase substantially.

Paul H Clark (12:02:05) : Said: I appeal to all in the science community to bring rigour to this debate, to keep an open mind to both sides of the argument and ensure ultimately that in the very least we assess sensibly the problem and what we should do about it.
I completely agree. In terms of what should we do, sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. IMO, this is one of those times.
I think that we are all in agreement that the climate is changing and I think we would also agree that it has been changing since the beginning of time (so to speak). Is the recent changes down to man? Maybe at a very localised level, ie large populus areas or widespread land change, such as huge areas of the Amazon Rainforrest being cleared. I don’t see compelling evidence of AGW on a global scale though.
I think that you also have to take into account the findings from other science disciplines. Paleo-Archeology, Dendrochronoloy or Astonomy for example, all have compelling examples of how the changes to the climate are most likely to be natural. Certainly we can look at histoical records to tell us what the atmosphere was like a few million years, but we have to also consider how different the land was back then. We can show that CO2 was much higher and temperatures lower back then and try to superimpose that view on todays world, but we have to remember that the planet then had a lot more vegitation too.
So, to go back to my original opinion, sometime its best to do nothing. There is a chance I may be wrong, but I truly hope not.

We have used Gavin Schmidt’s own ENSO corrected data to show that the current decade long flat temperature trend is not related to ENSO.http://reallyrealclimate.blogspot.com/2008/07/gavin-schmidt-enso-adjustment-for.html
Gavin has now been asked four times on Real Climate, in his own ENSO thread, about the ENSO corrected flat trend. Namely, if the trend is not a result of ENSO, which it clearly isn’t, then what elements of natural variation have overriden the +.2 C of man made warming that we should be seeing. It speaks volumes that Gavin is running away from the question.
If we know so little about natural variability that we cannot give an attribution to a period that has already occured, then how can we assume that we know enough about natural variability to create models for the future or to isolate a climate sensitivity signal.

Evan Jones (12:21:36) :
“Poor NASA is in quite a dither over it while the boys over at UAH are noting the decrease of heat-trapping vapor and the increse of heat-reflective low-level clods.”Don’t you love farce?
My fault, I fear.
I thought that you’d want what I want…
Sorry, my dear!
And where are the clods
Send in the clods
Don’t bother, they’re here.
Sincere apologies to Judy Collins.

As Steve Sadlov mentioned above, the Sundowner winds at Santa Barbara can produce some dramatic temperature changes such as the unofficial 133F reported on June 17, 1859.http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0434(1998)013%3C0702%3ATSWOSB%3E2.0.CO%3B2&ct=1&SESSID=9e3568cd5dcb0ef59cf13cc0555a6cca
In the most severe Sundowner wind events, wind speeds can be of gale force or higher and surface air temperatures on the coastal plain, and even at the coast itself, can well exceed 100°F (37.8°C).
During the Painted Cave fire Sundowner event, the official Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) observing station at Santa Barbara airport reported a maximum temperature of 109°F (42.7°C), remarkable for a location on the coastal plain within 2 km of the ocean itself [where the sea surface temperature was approximately 65°F (18.3°C)]. As noted by Ryan and Burch (1992) and Ryan (1994), however, even this wind event pales in comparison to the 17 June 1859 Sundowner. A rather dramatic and colorful description of this event is provided by the following passage taken from the Coast Pilot of California (Davidson 1869).
The only incident of the simoom1 on this coast, mentioned either in its history or traditions, was that occurring at Santa Barbara, on Friday, the 17th of June 1859. The temperature during the morning was between 75° and 80°, and gradually and regularly increased until about one o’clock p.m., when a blast of hot air from the northwest swept suddenly over the town and struck the inhabitants with terror. It was quickly followed by others. At two o’clock the thermometer exposed to the air rose to 133°F, and continued at or near that point for nearly three hours, whilst the burning wind raised dense clouds of impalpable dust. No human being could withstand the heat. All betook themselves to their dwellings and carefully closed every door and window. The thick adobe walls would have required days to have become warmed, and were consequently an admirable protection. Calves, rabbits, birds, etc., were killed; trees were blighted; fruit was blasted and fell to the ground, burned only on one side; and gardens were ruined. At five o’clock the thermometer fell to 122°, and at seven it stood at 77°. A fisherman, in the channel in an open boat, came back with his arms badly blistered.

“So, is the 108F at the airport “official”, or is the 90F at the USHCN site “offical”?”
Official for what?, I would have to ask. Being both located in unincorporated Curry County, neither of those two reporting stations are within the city of Brookings itself, and neither constitutes a representative reading for the municipality at large. Each constitutes a record for its own situs only. I have two piece of property in Brookings, both within the city limits and both with a mile and a half of each other. I recorded high temperatures that day of 92F at the one and 107F at the other. Though embracing a small expanse of territory, Brookings has a multitude of microclimates and one simply has to accept that the climate in your yard may be different than that of your neighbor at the other end of the street. Gardeners in Brookings see this variability all the time in terms of what will grow where.

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